LIII. leg. V urbana. Column 1587. Tr. Alexandr Kolouch

[1587]
With this epithet the legion is named only on three inscriptions from Ateste (CIL V 2514. 2515. 2518), but is without any doubt identical with the Leg. V on another three inscriptions from the same site (CIL V 2508. 2510. 2519) on which the epithet is missing or is broken off because of stone erosion. About the legion see Pietrogrande, Legione Romane e soldati della V Urbana in Ateste, Padova 1886 (not available for me). Gardthausen Augustus II 68, 4 and 344, 13. v. Domaszewski N. Heidelb. Jahrb. IV 181 and 187, 4. About the epithet in general: Steinwender, 'Die legiones urbanae', Philol. XXXIX 527ff.
The inscriptions prove that its veterans were discharged to the colony Ateste after the battle of Actium (CIL V p. 240), and the legion was probably disbanded, i.e. it wasn’t taken into the standing army of Augustus. The suggestion of Gardthausen, following Wilmann here, who believes that the V Urbana can be identified as the later V Macedonica, is not very probable. V. Domaszewski traces the origins and the epithet of the legion back to a legion created in the year 710 = 44 CE by Pansa and left in the capital for its protection (Appian. bell. civ. III 91; Obsequens 69). Should, however, the consuls exceed the number of four legions created by consuls for every year? Perhaps the legion of recruits newly created by Caesar to his veteran army of 4 legions (IIII, Martia, VII and VIII) (Appian. III 47), whose number could only have been V (cf. v. Domaszewski idem 187), was handed over to the senate and left behind in the capital, while Pansa moved to Mutina with 4 legions created by himself. After all this the V. legion could have received its title urbana on some later occasion during the civil wars before Actium.